


Assumed Fluency

by Ruby_fruit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Pining, dumbfaces in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruby_fruit/pseuds/Ruby_fruit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More talking, less communication. But a little action at least?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assumed Fluency

**Author's Note:**

> i realize i should probably provide a visual if I'm gonna write fic about him. [this is Harellan](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ruby_fruit/media/harellan_zpswlghttqc.jpg.html). sequel to [Dead Languages](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3178850)

"I had meant to inquire about them before, but I didn’t wish to be rude. These are quite striking. And they have a particular meaning, I'm told?" 

Harellan lets Dorian turn his face into the weak winter sunlight coming through the library window, the better for Dorian to see the tree branches across Harellan cheeks and forehead, the roots on his chin. 

"The design of each vallaslin represents a god of ours," Harellan says. Dorian’s grip on his jaw is polite and dry and Harellan regrets ever allowing this line of inquiry.

"You said they're a rite of passage, yes?" Dorian's thumbnail scrapes lightly against one of the outer marks on his chin to test the texture, more like a scar than a human tattoo.

Harellan swallows and it clicks dryly in his throat; it is somehow worse that he doesn't think Dorian is even considering flirting right now. No outrageous remarks, or the way he draws himself up even though he's got a good half head on Harellan. Just bright interest and that little frown he gets when he's deep into something. 

Still, if Harellan endured the vallaslin, he can endure this. Probably.

"The vallaslin mean you're an adult in the eyes of the clan. That if the gods ever return they will see you, and know who you are. You can try to receive them whenever you want, but if you fail, or the Keeper thinks you’re not ready, then you have to wait." Another scratch of a thumbnail, this time on the main line of the trunk. That part had been the worst, the line bisecting his lower lip--he cannot remember the sensation exactly, only that it had briefly been the only thing that existed. 

"Fail?" Dorian asks. His breath is warm on Harellan’s cheek.

"While the vallaslin is being applied, you cannot make a sound." 

"Impressive." Dorian's rings are hard and smooth against his jawbone and Harellan concentrates on that. "Literally 'blood writing', am I correct?" Dorian finally releases him and Harellan resists the urge to scrub the feel of him off his skin like a child given an unwanted kiss. Sympathetic magic tingles sluggishly under his skin. 

"Yes, your own blood and ink, mixed." Harellan says, remembering the nick in the crook of his elbow that had bruised luridly, all out of proportion with the wound, the coppery smell of the blood mixing with the sour tang of the ink.

Oh there’s magic in the vallaslin, of course. They don’t fade like human tattoos, and while the ink goes on black, there’s no guessing what color it will heal. Keeper Deshanna had hrumphed when his healed a bright bloody red. Harellan does not really think you can divine things from a color, but still, he hopes now, as he hoped then, that it is not a bad omen.

"So which one of your gods did you decide was worthy of this?" Dorian says, touching careful fingertips to the delicate tangle of branches under Harellan's left eye.

Harellan's breath catches in his chest. 'This,' he wants to say. All of the Inquisition, from Leliana in her rookery to the green recruits in the Hinterlands. He does not believe in the Maker, he doesn't think Andraste flung him out of the fade at her temple. But he is starting to think this is what he should be doing. That this is what was meant when the Keeper asked for his pledge and Mythal was the only name on his tongue. 

"Mythal," he says. “she is - was - the All-Mother, the goddess of justice.” 

Dorian makes a low hmm, dropping his hand to his own lap and watching Harellan intently, almost suspiciously and - oh. The air between them is heavy and humming. Magic in the vallaslin, magic in Dorian, and he’s had his hands all over them this morning. Harellan really is an idiot. Absolutely. Best idea he’s had since taking that ugly sword from Leliana, to just forget he wears blood magic in his skin and let the fucking necromancer put his hands all over it. 

He hadn’t mentioned it. He probably should have mentioned it. But Dorian can be so prickly about certain things. Harellan can never really tell until he puts his foot in it. And to hear shems talk blood magic is some great, wicked monolith. Utterly separate from the other schools, as if you can split magic up like that when it all comes from the same place. 

The pause in their conversation has extended into awkwardness and well beyond it. The late afternoon light coming in the window is heavy and golden and just this side of too bright but Harellan can see the pupils of Dorian’s eyes widening, swallowing up the grey. He can feel his heart beating in his throat. Ambient magic caught up in the current rolls between them like a river flowing back on itself. Something is going to happen and Harellan has no idea what. 

"Inquisitor?"

With a sound like a joint popping, the moment breaks. The light turns weak and winter-thin again as magic shatters and dissipates like dust motes in the sun. Harellan drags in a breath; his chest aches. 

"Josephine? What do you need?" Harellan's limbs feel stiff when he stands and he has no idea if he's relieved or furious. 

"I apologize for the interruption your Worship, Ser Pavus, but there is a - situation."

Harellan glances back at Dorian, his head is down, staring at the hand he'd been inspecting Harellan's vallaslin with. He looks up briefly when Harellan excuses himself, and his eyes are very wide.

 

The situation is Orlesians -- isn't it always -- and it's dark by the time Harellan has smoothed all the ruffled feathers. He tells Josephine he doesn't want to be disturbed until morning unless Skyhold is burning down and drags himself to his quarters. 

Harellan yanks his boots off, pulls half the clasps free on his shirt, abruptly runs out of energy and collapses back on his bed. His mind is a dull blank; he is absently aware he needs to drink some of the water on the table beside his bed to counteract all the wine he'd drunk with the Orlesians, and get under the covers away from the chill pricking at his face and bare chest, but not right this moment. 

Then into the comfortable blank of his mind comes the memory of of Dorian's wide eyes this afternoon, the feel of his hands on Harellan's skin. Harellan groans, loudly and with feeling, and drags his hands down his face. He wiggles out of shirt and pants without getting up, wrinkling them rather hopelessly, and drinks straight from the pitcher before burrowing down into the blankets, warming them with a spell that takes far more effort to cast than it should. 

Harellan presses his cheek to the pillow and his hips to the mattress, half hard and too ill and tired to do anything about it, which makes him feel that much more pathetic.

He hasn't lost his head over a man like this since he was a pulling boy. There are half a dozen ready excuses for why he cannot seem to make a move. He quite literally has all the power here and Dorian has almost none. Dorian is human and he is an elf. The Inquisition and thus the Inquisitor balance delicately between countries and cannot seem to be playing favorites. But most compelling is the the tiny shameful part of Harellan's heart that knows - despite his current position - he is an elf from a clan of barely fifty people. Savages by most opinions, animal by others, and Dorian for all his self imposed exile is one step removed from the ruling class of the Tevinter empire.

The pride of the Dalish has always seemed more like desperate self-defense than anything else to Harellan. Take away that and what do you have? Tiny bands of nomads, slowly dying out and clinging to what scraps of a dead culture they can find. Thinking that made him feel very smart and self important when he was younger. Now it just makes him ache, a peculiar bruised sort of feeling deep in his chest that makes swallowing difficult. 

The situation with Orlais had been elves. Chevaliers in training falling upon a band of Dalish close enough to Skyhold that Josephine felt they could do something about it. Josephine brought him in to shame the Chevaliers. To force them to explain that killing elves was no more an immoral crime than hunting rabbits in front of a Dalish elf with more power than they. Harellan understands why she did it, he even respects that she thought to do it, but he wishes she had left him out of it. He can only have the Chevaliers stripped of rank and sent home in disgrace. He cannot bring back the clan they killed and he cannot kill them without ruining any progress made or to be made with Orlais. 

Harellan knows the citizenry of Orlais are no more evil than any other nation of people. He knows this. Given the least excuse, he would raze the entirety of Orlais to bare dirt. Raise a hundred thousand more trees than the Emerald Graves. This does not make him proud; it makes him feel like a savage. 

This is Harellan’s fear. That for all his words and flirting Dorian thinks of him as no more than some exotically attractive animal. A pretty servant or a useful slave, but in the end still something more animal than human. Rabbit. Harellan thinks of Dorian's hands on him this morning and the twist in his stomach is equal parts lust and unease.

And what does it make Harellan, that he wants Dorian anyway, even with these doubts? Sleep is a long time coming.

 

Josephine greets him in the morning with good news and a cup of very strong tea full of honey. They found survivors from the clan the Chevaliers hit. Inquisition scouts had swept the area without much hope, but they found a handful of elves. Mostly the injured, old and young, but they were alive and they had come out of hiding at the sight of Inquisition uniforms. The news eases something tight in Harellan’s chest. 

"Thank you for coming to me with this, Josephine." he says, touching her arm lightly.

Josephine’s smile fades and she looks away, holding her clipboard a little tighter. "In truth, Inquisitor, I wondered if I was being cruel to you, bringing you into this. I thought that perhaps I ought to have let Cullen deal with those-- those _beasts_. But I wanted to shame them, and I wanted them to know the full force of the Inquisition hung over their heads and the heads of any who would do so again. And unfortunately, you, my Lord, are the best tool to communicate that with."

Had this happened a month ago, Harellan would have been furious. Now he is just grateful.

"You made the right choice," he says, and is rewarded by the relaxation of her spine, the sweetness of her smile. 

"Thank you, Inquisitor. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must see to the survivors. If I leave it to anyone else they will come up with another _brilliant_ idea like housing them near the barracks," she says with exasperation, and sweeps off in a bustle of gold skirts.

Harellan stands in the great hall for a moment. It's early, no one really around except servants and guards. Breakfast is being served to an exhausted looking group of scouts on the long tables in front of the fire, and Harellan’s stomach growls loudly, reminding him he'd skipped dinner last night. The guardswoman by his door, a long scar pulling the corner of her eye and giving her a sly expression, grins without relaxing out of attention. Harellan looks at her and she bites the inside of her lip. 

"At ease, guardswoman." Harellan says. She meets his eye briefly; hers are dark brown and warm with good humor. He recognizes her-- she's been with them since Haven.

"Your Worship," she says, and nods, a slight loosening of her shoulders and a tilt of her square chin.

Food, Harellan thinks, stepping further into the hall. Food and then he's taking himself out to the stables to relax until his thoughts are no longer chasing themselves so pointlessly. 

Harellan can barely believe one of the Ferelden clans actually sent them a red hart. His clan had harts, Brecilians, with broad feet and coarse coats for the scrubby sands and marshes of the Free Marches. Good animals, but nothing like the immense doe in the Inquisition’s stables. Harellan meant it when he told Dennet she was priceless. She doesn't have a value; clans don't sell harts. You can be given one, and the clans who breed them will trade them and tempt in wild ones to keep the bloodlines fresh, but they don't sell them. 

Harellan lingers in the stables until morning is well past before he finally feels more like himself. Or at least like he won’t scream at the first person to ask him the wrong thing. The hart lips at his sleeve, blinking the beautiful, heavy-lashed eyes all big herbivores seem to have, even snoufleurs. 

"You ate all the apples, greedy girl," he says, running his fingers through the downy-soft hair under her chin.

Insistent nudging demands Harellan hold out his empty hands for her inspection, and the hart searches thoroughly as if Harellan might be hiding treats between his fingers. Finally she raises her head and blows a sad, apple-scented breath into his face. Harellan huffs back at her and she turns to the hay in her manger, head held carefully high to keep from clipping him with the enormous spread of her antlers.

Harellan drops from his perch on her door reluctantly. He has wasted enough time out here, and he hates to make people come look for him. Master Dennet beams at him on his way out. Any other shem and Harellan might have been nervous leaving a hart in their care, but Dennet is so delighted to have her in his stable and listened carefully when Harellan explained how their care differed from horses. Dennet had even requested that a couple elven stablehands be found. 

Then Solas corners Harellan coming out of the stables. 

"You are an elf and he is of Tevinter." Solas says it flatly, with finality, as if that is the entirety of the matter and there is no need for any further discussion.

"And neither of us can ever be anything more than that?" Harellan snaps, brushing past him.

"You are already more," Solas says, falling into step with him. "Whether or not Dorian can overcome the mindset he was raised with is yet to be seen."

The day is clear, the slightly gentler cold that passes for approaching spring on a mountain. Even the rhythmic clash and shout of soldiers training sounds small under the endless blue of the sky. Harellan thinks of the drizzle that chased them out of Ferelden from Redcliff. Of how unnervingly quiet Dorian had been after the confrontation with his father. Of the grey false dawn lighting the walls of their tent and hot tears soaking Harellan’s collar, tremors under his hands that Dorian could not stop and his perfect composure in the light of day. They had not talked, and Harellan had ridden knee to knee with him in silence, at a loss for what to say.

Harellan hates being caught off guard like this. He feels like an errant child, hands sticky with apples and smelling of horse and hart. He wants to throw all he knows in Solas' face, but it's not his right to use something so personal to Dorian as his own ammunition. 

"Solas, you like Dorian. I’ve heard you two go on about magic until even I get bored! I'm not a child, I'm as aware of his faults as you are, and I cannot figure out what your problem is with me spending time with him!" 

Solas gives Harellan a disappointed look, like a student who's failed an easy lesson. Harellan bristles. 

The great hall of Skyhold is still quiet today, guards, scouts, Varric in his corner by the fire. An Orlesian couple murmuring together in the corner. Which is good, Harellan supposes. If he ends up making a scene, Varric will write it all down. 

"I just want you to be cautious, lethallan; he is human. For his whole life, Dorian has never seen elves as anything but servants, slaves, chattel for the most corrupt of magisters." Solas' tone is soothing, as if Harellan has never left the woods before, as if he doesn't know what humans do to elves. Like he cannot tell when the shem looking at him is only seeing exotic features and a hairless body. 

Solas sounds like a Keeper. Harellan would not put up with this from his own Keeper. He certainly will not tolerate it from Solas.

Solas must find his silence encouraging. "If you are lonely there are some of the people here at Skyhold. City elves and Dalish both, I'm sure if you would speak to them-"

" _No_."

The word shakes in Harellan’s chest. The murmur of the room around them goes silent, then resumes, slowly. Harellan's heart is beating hard, and he struggles for diplomacy. Solas is vital to the Inquisition. Solas is his friend. Usually. When he's not shoving his nose where it doesn't belong. 

Solas opens his mouth, and Harellan absolutely cannot do this right now. He turns and stalks through the nearest door, only barely registering Varric stepping genially and immovably into Solas’ path as the door swings shut. Harellan doesn't even realize he’s headed for the library until Vivienne takes his elbow and sweeps him into her wake and on to her balcony. 

“Never in anger, dearest,” she says, “now pace, work it out of your system. Even the worst temper looks regal and troubled from a distance, and the only one up here is me.” With that, she shuts the tall glass doors with him on the outside. Harellan has never been so grateful to be shut outside on a freezing day, and takes her advice. The pacing keeps him warm at least.

So Dorian's views are colored by the culture he grew up in. So are Vivienne's and Harellan loves her as well, if very differently. Nor does he hate Cassandra for her desperate Andrastism, or Leliana for her love of the Game. Creators help him, he has even learned to like Cullen. 

Would Solas warn him off any of them, Harellan wonders? Mark aside, Cassandra and Cullen would be more comfortable with him locked in a cage somewhere. As would Vivienne, though he supposes he might have more rights with her. A gilt Circle is still a Circle though. 

Harellan cannot think of Leliana as even a hypothetical lover without nervously checking the area for rooks. 

No, he thinks, Solas would object to any of them. It is not where they are from - as if Orlais and the Chantry are any less soaked in elven blood than Tevinter - it is that they are human. That is the root of Solas’s objection. Harellan said it himself to Solas on the long road to Skyhold. He is valuable to them because of how he was made, not who he is. Without the mark he is a mage to be caged, and without magic he is an elf. A Dalish to be watched warily lest they make off with the children or the silver, or city elf to be disregarded entirely. 

Harellan braces his hands on the balcony railing and stares unseeing into the courtyard. It feels cruel to think these things, ungrateful. It is not that he doubts their affection for him now, but he knows that was how it began. Perhaps she has forgotten, but Harellan remembers he woke up in Haven in chains with Cassandra’s sword at his throat. Harellan crosses his arms over his chest and leans his hip against the banister.

So he should keep himself only to his own. Fossilize with the rest of the people. To what end, exactly? There will be no babies from him, ever, so it’s only pride. And Harellan has no use at all for this sort of pride, the kind that will ignore the rising water while insisting that their way is the only right way. 

Disdain of the Dalish notwithstanding, Harellan thinks his Keeper and Solas would have gotten along very well.

Dorian promised to protect Harellan in the worst of all futures. He threw the Inquisition in his father’s face with pride, as if a magister’s seat was a poor second place. Dorian defended him as if the insinuation that they were sleeping together was insulting to _Harellan_. And, Creators help him, Dorian is beautiful, and Harellan wants him so much he aches with it.

Dorian, Harellan thinks, despite all his doubts, looks at him and sees a person first and not the Inquisitor. And that is something not even Solas does. He pushes off the railing and steps back into Vivienne’s parlor. 

“Have a seat, my dear, I’m nearly done,” Vivienne says, not looking up from where she’s making notes in the margins of book. Harellan seats himself carefully on the chaise opposite her as she finishes her thought, sands the page from a copper dish on her side table and sets it aside open. Vivienne faces him, folding her hands over her crossed knees, and Harellan fights the urge to fidget. His temper is mostly spent and he just feels drained and foolish.

“I won’t ask what that was all about. One in your position has few enough secrets, and I will not pry into yours.” Vivienne pours tea for them both and Harellan takes the offered cup from her gratefully. His hands are freezing and his stomach is in knots. 

“Thank you, Lady Vivienne. As always, I appreciate your kindness and your discretion.”

Vivienne accepts this as her due and they finish their tea in companionable silence. The cup is bone china so thin and fine that Harellan still fears breaking one accidentally. The tea is dark and full flavored. He has learned from experience not to drink it after sunset if he wants to sleep before dawn.

Vivienne taps a smooth, rounded nail against the side of her teacup, once, twice. A deliberate absent-minded gesture. “Inquisitor, do tell me if I am overstepping myself, but,” and here she pauses, not artfully at all, but purposely, and Harellan’s attention goes from absent to focused. “I would speak with him, if I were you. You are powerful, Inquisitor; you are also feared and hated. As are all people who seek to attain to such heights. Believe me when I tell you that having that sort of support is a blessing I would not do without for all the world.” Vivienne’s brief smile is radiant in its sweetness and Harellan breathes out slow and soft. 

“You think I could find that in him?” 

Vivienne shakes her head at him. “My dear, I think you already have. Now go, you have disturbed my reading enough for today.” 

Thus dismissed, Harellan gets up and takes himself gratefully from her presence 

 

Today is just not Harellan’s day. Possibly it’s just not his year, but he tries not to think about that too much. 

He walked into the library, still smelling faintly of the stables and windswept from his time on Vivienne’s balcony, only to find Mother Giselle in her pristine, starched robes arguing with Dorian. Harellan dismisses her, less politely than he should, but his patience is gone. The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition officially, but he will not put up with it denouncing individual members of the Inquisition personally, not within Skyhold’s walls. Fenedhis, Dorian should at least be able to find some peace in the _library_ of all places.

And then -

Rumors. Dorian is asking if he’s bothered by the mere rumor that they might be more than friends. Harellan considers giving up and going mad, it would be less painfully ridiculous. 

"It's not the worst thing they could assume, is it?" he asks, feeling a little dazed.

Harellan’s palms are sweaty, the back of his neck cold. It would be far, far more embarrassing if they assumed the truth. The Herald of Andraste too afraid of taking advantage, of being taken advantage of, to do more than flirt and stare. Wouldn’t that just inspire nations?

Mother Giselle hovers in the corner of his vision. Harellan is going to have words with Cassandra. Hadn’t she promised she’d keep the Chantry Sisters from forgetting this was no longer the Chantry’s Inquisition? He answers Dorian absently, his abused temper flaring again. He won't be having people harassed or preached at, the Inquisition is not-

"Would you prefer me to answer in some other fashion?"

It’s the tone more than the words that snaps Harellan’s focus back to Dorian. They’re doing this now? Today? No, of course they are. Why not. Harellan’s heart thumps unhelpfully in his throat, his palms are still damp. Laughter, nervous and awkward, spills out of him before he can help it.

This would be a fantastic time for a rift, right in the middle of the library. Shades in the shelves, terror demons getting pecked to death by those enormous rooks of Leliana’s. The library remains quiet and still.

"If you're capable." Harellan says, unsure if he himself is capable anymore. This is a farce, he--oh.

Dorian’s mouth is warm, Dorian is warm. He's tall enough that Harellan has to tip his head up and he feels bigger this close. A wide human chest and the tickle of his mustache. 

"'If you're capable'. The nonsense you speak."

Harellan opens his eyes reluctantly. His mouth feels cool and damp. Mother Giselle no longer hovers in his periphery. He thinks he should point out that it takes two to do the awkward little mating dance he and Dorian have been engaged in. He should ask what this means. Instead he goes up on his toes, pulls Dorian back down and kisses him again. Harder this time, with the weight of Dorian’s palm on the small of his back and the way he opens his mouth for Harellan's tongue. When they break apart again they are both breathing hard. Dorian looks, oh, Creators, has Harellan been blind or is Dorian just very good at hiding?

He’ll ask later. Right now Harellan steps forward, crowding Dorian further back into the shadows of a bookshelf. Dorian’s head is lowered to him, looming without threat. 

“Playing with fire, aren’t you?” Dorian says, too breathless for Harellan to pick up any nuance in the words, if there’s even any to be found. He does seem to be waiting for a response, hands hesitant on Harellan’s hips. Harellan doesn’t know what possible response Dorian could want right now. Or, well. What vocal response. 

“Well, I _am_ a mage,” Harellan says, and slides his hands over Dorian’s arms, up over his shoulders and into his hair, soft and slick and smelling of citrus. Dorian makes a noise, barely more than a sigh and bends to kiss him again.


End file.
